The Diploma Thesis deals with the banking crisis and aims to account for different approaches to the understanding of the nature of banking crisis. The Thesis further aims to provide answers why the banking crisis are caused and why so far there are no measures that would effectivelly prevent such crisis. At first, the Thesis states the definition of banking with the emphasis on banks as the institutional backbone of the current functioning of the financial system. The Thesis pays specific attention to the characteristics of two basic legal banking instruments, particulary loans and deposits. While acknowledging the loan expansion, the thesis argues the role of regulatory authorities and the limits of their competences in regards to the prevention of crisis. Followingly, the Thesis offers a view on a banking crisis phenomenon with appropriate historical overview outlining the banking crisis in Czechoslovakia in years 1918 to 1939 and after 1989, the loan expension influence on the business cycles and approaches to banking crisis solving in respect to stabilization of the banking system and restructuring of banks. At last but not least, the Thesis sums up the global financial crisis that started as a banking crisis, respectively as a crisis of one segment of the banking market in the United States...